On September 12, 2018, Mississippi attorney Merrida Coxwell participated in a Facebook Live interview with AskTheLawyers.com™. He discussed texting and driving, and how Mississippi laws fail to prevent it. Until 2016, there was only a $25 fine for texting and driving. The fine has since been raised to $100. Coxwell, who monitors new legislation in Mississippi, says that there is strong opposition to new texting while driving laws.

“The bill to even get the $25 civil penalty passed failed several times,” he said. “There was not a lot of support for it in prior years.”

He said that an opposition to “government encroachment” stopped the bill from passing sooner.

“There's this thing going on in America where we don't want government to tell us anything,” he said. “And I think they felt like they didn't want government to tell them that they couldn't text and drive, even though it's just dangerous. There’s no question about that anymore.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 9 people die and over 1,000 people are injured in distracted driving crashes every day.

In a YouTube video summarizing the issue, Coxwell said while the penalties for texting and driving are low, “if you hit someone and harm or kill them, they are exceedingly high: victims can not only get compensatory damages such as medical bills, loss of family support, and loss of economic support, but also punitive damages meant as a punishment to the offender.”

Coxwell says that if you suspect someone who hit you was texting while driving, contact an attorney with experience in these types of cases. They can find out if the driver was texting at the time of the accident.

Merrida Coxwell is an injury attorney based in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the managing partner of Coxwell & Associates, PLLC. He has recovered several multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements for his clients, including a $144 million verdict for product liability that he won alongside two other attorneys. He focuses his practice on personal injury, criminal defense and financial fraud litigation.